On Our Return To Camp, Thoroughly Drenched And Cold, The Old Chief
Came To Visit Us, Apparently As Wet And Cold As Ourselves.
"I have been thinking of you all day," he said, "and pitying you,
knowing how miserable you were, and
As soon as I saw your canoe
coming back I was ashamed to think that I had been sitting warm and
dry at my fire while you were out in the storm; therefore I made
haste to strip off my dry clothing and put on these wet rags to share
your misery and show how much I love you."
I had another long talk with Ka-hood-oo-shough the next day.
"I am not able," he said, "to tell you how much good your words have
done me. Your words are good, and they are strong words. Some of my
people are foolish, and when they make their salmon-traps they do not
take care to tie the poles firmly together, and when the big
rain-floods come the traps break and are washed away because the
people who made them are foolish people. But your words are strong
words and when storms come to try them they will stand the storms."
There was much hand shaking as we took our leave and assurances of
eternal friendship. The grand old man stood on the shore watching us
and waving farewell until we were out of sight.
We now steered for the Muir Glacier and arrived at the front on the
east side the evening of the third, and camped on the end of the
moraine, where there was a small stream. Captain Tyeen was inclined
to keep at a safe distance from the tremendous threatening cliffs of
the discharging wall. After a good deal of urging he ventured within
half a mile of them, on the east side of the fiord, where with Mr.
Young I went ashore to seek a camp-ground on the moraine, leaving the
Indians in the canoe. In a few minutes after we landed a huge berg
sprung aloft with awful commotion, and the frightened Indians
incontinently fled down the fiord, plying their paddles with
admirable energy in the tossing waves until a safe harbor was reached
around the south end of the moraine. I found a good place for a camp
in a slight hollow where a few spruce stumps afforded firewood. But
all efforts to get Tyeen out of his harbor failed. "Nobody knew," he
said, "how far the angry ice mountain could throw waves to break his
canoe." Therefore I had my bedding and some provisions carried to my
stump camp, where I could watch the bergs as they were discharged and
get night views of the brow of the glacier and its sheer jagged face
all the way across from side to side of the channel. One night the
water was luminous and the surge from discharging icebergs churned
the water into silver fire, a glorious sight in the darkness. I also
went back up the east side of the glacier five or six miles and
ascended a mountain between its first two eastern tributaries, which,
though covered with grass near the top, was exceedingly steep and
difficult. A bulging ridge near the top I discovered was formed of
ice, a remnant of the glacier when it stood at this elevation which
had been preserved by moraine material and later by a thatch of dwarf
bushes and grass.
Next morning at daybreak I pushed eagerly back over the comparatively
smooth eastern margin of the glacier to see as much as possible of
the upper fountain region. About five miles back from the front I
climbed a mountain twenty-five hundred feet high, from the flowery
summit of which, the day being clear, the vast glacier and its
principal branches were displayed in one magnificent view. Instead of
a stream of ice winding down a mountain-walled valley like the
largest of the Swiss glaciers, the Muir looks like a broad undulating
prairie streaked with medial moraines and gashed with crevasses,
surrounded by numberless mountains from which flow its many tributary
glaciers. There are seven main tributaries from ten to twenty miles
long and from two to six miles wide where they enter the trunk, each
of them fed by many secondary tributaries; so that the whole number
of branches, great and small, pouring from the mountain fountains
perhaps number upward of two hundred, not counting the smallest. The
area drained by this one grand glacier can hardly be less than seven
or eight hundred miles, and probably contains as much ice as all the
eleven hundred Swiss glaciers combined. Its length from the frontal
wall back to the head of its farthest fountain seemed to be about
forty or fifty miles, and the width just below the confluence of the
main tributaries about twenty-five miles. Though apparently
motionless as the mountains, it flows on forever, the speed varying
in every part with the seasons, but mostly with the depth of the
current, and the declivity, smoothness and directness of the
different portions of the basin. The flow of the central cascading
portion near the front, as determined by Professor Reid, is at the
rate of from two and a half to five inches an hour, or from five to
ten feet a day. A strip of the main trunk about a mile in width,
extending along the eastern margin about fourteen miles to a lake
filled with bergs, has so little motion and is so little interrupted
by crevasses, a hundred horsemen might ride abreast over it without
encountering very much difficulty.
But far the greater portion of the vast expanse looking smooth in the
distance is torn and crumpled into a bewildering network of hummocky
ridges and blades, separated by yawning gulfs and crevasses, so that
the explorer, crossing it from shore to shore, must always have a
hard time. In hollow spots here and there in the heart of the icy
wilderness are small lakelets fed by swift-glancing streams that flow
without friction in blue shining channels, making delightful melody,
singing and ringing in silvery tones of peculiar sweetness, radiant
crystals like flowers ineffably fine growing in dazzling beauty along
their banks.
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